


up the ladder

by ideal_girl (trainwreckdress)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Addiction, Drug Addiction, Drugged Sex, Drugs, F/M, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-01
Updated: 2011-08-01
Packaged: 2017-10-22 02:33:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trainwreckdress/pseuds/ideal_girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Sherlock's pre-series experiences. Everything that happens makes us who we are at this exact moment: fucking and fighting, drugs and sobriety, love and loneliness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	up the ladder

Sherlock's 15 and confused the first time someone looks at him a beat too long, eyes burning a path from his eyes to his mouth and back again. The queue at the shop in town is interminably long and slow, thanks to the teenaged girl at the till who's more interested in the state of her nails than the state of your shopping. She snaps her gum, smirks when she notices Sherlock noticing her _noticing._ He scrubs at his face with the hem of his tee shirt, comes back with streaks of dirt marring the pristine white.

“Ugh, you know how Mummy hates that. Don't you have a handkerchief?” Mycroft's 18 and getting ready to go to University in the Fall; he's not made for experiments in the garden anymore. Sherlock's decided he's not going to uni if it makes you into a wanker. “Here, use mine.”

“Oh, budge off, Mycroft.” But Sherlock takes the square of cloth, cleans his face. She's still staring. Sherlock elbows Mycroft out of the way and escapes to the street.

*

He's 16 and spotty. He spends a lot of time in the library that year.

*

Sherlock's 17 and frustrated when he tastes someone else's tongue, spit-slicked and warm in his mouth. His hands shake and his teeth buzz through the kiss – a _kiss,_ he's being _kissed,_ he's _kissing someone_ – and she pulls away with a hum, her breath hot on his lips. She asks him if he wanted _“more?”_ He doesn't know what “more” means, but he says _“yeah, okay.”_ Her fingers curl around his belt and he shakes apart before she even touches skin.

“That's alright,” she says, taking his hands and pushing them up under her skirt. “You can touch me.”

*

And then he's 18 and at the summer cottage down the shore and in love with this girl he's known for three days. She's older than him and has the keys to her parents' car, so they sneak out at dawn on the forth day, running lampless until they get into town. The ride is short, but action-packed, rain slicking the roads and fogging the windows. Her lips trip half-whispered colorful epithets at the tourists who dart across the street and temp fate. Sherlock tells himself to relax, to sit back and stop fighting the seat belt, but it doesn't help, the nylon cutting into his shoulder through the thin cotton of his shirt. The car slows, swings wide and to the left, bumping down the sandy road. She backs the car into a spot hidden by a bluff on one side, sand dunes on the other. They spill out of the car and tumble into the morning surf, their hands cold on each other's skin. The sun cracks open the sky as he backs her up against the boot of the car, his shoulders cutting a shadow across her face. She looks up at him, her thighs falling open around his hips, and he thinks, _“I'm going to have sex, sex, SEX!”_ and his breath sticks in his throat and his heart skitters.

It's two months of absolutely nothing but skin and sweat and he's convinced, fucking _convinced_ that this is _it,_ and it's all fucking perfect until he tells her that he wants to spend his gap year with her and she freezes under the weight of his arm and then her chest expands into laughter and she kisses his brow and tells him that he's crazy, that “that is not what this is” and his vision swims a bit in the dark and–

 _deleted_

*

Sherlock's 20 and on his second gap year when he figures out that he can use sex to get what he wants – clothes, gadgets, housing, drugs, _information._ He burns through London, kips on people's couches and eats their food, takes it all in and experiences everything he thought possible. It's not until he's 23 and across the table from a man he's just met, lines of cocaine cutting perpendicular to his heart _(his stomach, his spleen, his guts)_ that he realizes he's missed something _(there's always something)_ He takes the twenty-pound note from the man's outstretched hand, fingers lingering. When the table is clean, dust cleared from the shiny wooden surface by means of wet fingertips scrubbed against gums, Sherlock climbs across it on his hands and knees, fits himself against a firm chest, his hands curving around broad shoulders.

His palms sing and his mouth forms an “oh!”; the kiss is a filthy wet shock against his throat. They tear at each other, lungs filling with great shuddering breaths as fingers fit under clothes and in warm, secret places. Speech is centered around _“there,” “oh,”_ and _“yes,”_ and when he comes, Sherlock can feel the whole of the room through his skin, gravity pressing him down and splitting him open, his blood screaming through his veins.

*

They stay together for days, weeks, months, years – it's unclear. Most of it's been deleted now, huge chunks of pleasure ripped from his memory; necessary. Had to, to stay clean to stay sober to _not upset Mummy._ Sex, the high of it, the joy, the delight, so close to the bright keen edge of cocaine, the blur of an orgasm fading so like the slow comfort of Valium.

He's 26 when he starts to focus on things that hurt, really _hurt;_ controlling his mind through rote and practice. He learns to master hunger, thirst, _loneliness._ He takes to reading, _really reading,_ everything, books and magazines and labels and signs and leaflets and journals and –

He observes; people, places, things. Rides the tube in shabby clothes and too many bags, his back stooped with sunglasses hiding his eyes. He's invisible to the thousands that pass by. He kips with the homeless when the weather is mild, listens to their stories about who goes there and brings what and the pattern of tourists and traffic and weather. He brings small tokens when it's harsh out; a blanket he's stolen out of an open trunk, bag full of food just one day off from the shop on the corner. Sherlock sleeps in a room above a garage in Balham owned by the brother of a woman who once asked him to _“prove it”_ when he told her that her husband was cheating on her with his business partner. She got the house and most of his money in the divorce.

It's not until he's 27 and cornered in a dirty alleyway, his coat catching on the rough brick of the pub as he gets his ribs kicked in by a gentleman who didn't take kindly to Sherlock's oversharing of his sexual proclivities with the room _(“It's obvious by the way your belt is buckled that you just recently visited the men's room with your friend here, and–”),_ when he realizes that he should probably learn how to throw a proper punch, because it's not every day that the police actually show up on time and keep you from getting killed.

*

He's 28 and cultivates a taste for underground boxing. With it comes a thirst for painkillers, and it's a short hop to illicitly procured Vicodin and Percocet. He deletes his 29th year.

*

Sherlock's nearly 30 when he gets collared with an ASBO, ends up in front of a Sergeant with his pockets turned out and pills scattered on the pavement. He's shoved into the back of a patrol car. There's a traffic jam and papers strewn across the front seat, and Sherlock sees it, words spilling out of his mouth in between invective against the insanity of pulling him in for _“medicine, it's just medicine, I'm not a junkie, not at least anymore,”_ and he _cracks the case –_ cracks it wide open and the Sergeant is yanking him out of the car by his coat and asking, no shouting, _“How did you do that, how did you know?”_

He spends the night in lock-up, the Sergeant not sure if he's part of it, part of the kidnapping ring that's managed to steal six little girls out of their homes in the dead of night, five of their bodies washed up on the banks of the Thames, and confounded the police for months.

The next morning, Sherlock wakes up to a coffee _(“Black, two sugars.”)_ pushed under his nose by the Sergeant. Sherlock takes the cup, wraps his hands around the warmth leeching out of the waxed paper.

“My name is Greg Lestrade,” the Sergeant says. He leans against the wall, his palms to the ceiling. “Thank you for saving that little girl's life.”

*

“There are rules, Sherlock.”

“Oh, come _on,_ Lestrade.”

“I _will_ call your brother.”

A beat, the rattle of plastic. Sherlock hands over the bottle of pills.

“Fine.”

*

Sherlock's 32 when he gets clean again, without Mummy knowing he was ever _dirty_ (again). Mycroft knows because he knows everything, and Sherlock knows Lestrade hasn't told him, because Lestrade can't lie, has the worst tells Sherlock's ever seen _(ring finger to eyebrow, thumb to nose)._ When he makes Inspector, Lestrade shoves him work in exchange for blood tests, gets him lab time at Barts when he's clean for two months.

“You're not my bloody minder, _Inspector,”_ Sherlock hisses, but the venom is weak, and Lestrade's eyes crease merrily.

“Hope not,” he says, cigarette dangling from his lips. “That would be worse than my real job.”

They always meet in coffee shops, never pubs. After three months, Sherlock asks Lestrade how many years he's been in the program and Lestrade flips his 10-year medallion across his knuckles.

"Figured you'd already reckoned how long."

"I always confirm observations when primary source information is available." He narrows his eyes. "You've been in for 12 years–"

"Backslid." Lestrade shrugs, looks at the coin before he pockets it. "This is my real age."

*

“What are you going to do with your life?” Lestrade asks once, just past Sherlock's 34th birthday. It's the same words Sherlock's father and brother used, multiple times over many years, but it feels different. Sherlock's heart thumps, but not painfully. They are on a park bench, a thick stack of cold cases sandwiched between them – Lestrade's birthday present to him. “You could come work for us, really work for us, just get the certifications–”

“No, don't be ridiculous.” Sherlock feels his fingers skid against the lining of his gloves, fists against his thighs. The wind kicks up, the tree across from them sheds leaves onto the walking path.

“What about family – not your brother, that's not what I mean,” Lestrade rolls his eyes. “No, someone to spend your life with? Friends, even. The stuff that really matters?”

“The only thing that matters is the work.” He yanks a file from the pile between them. “You're wasting time, I don't need–”

“Alright!” Lestrade cuts him off. “Tell me about this locked door murder, then.”

*

 _If brother has green ladder, arrest brother. -SH_

**Author's Note:**

> I found a few of these lines written (in my hand) in an envelope when I was cleaning out my desk. I don't remember writing them; I really don't even know what they were referencing. Started this at 1:40pm, "finished" it at 4:10pm. Unbeta'd, raw, crass; no apologies, had to happen.


End file.
